


Dust to Dust

by manic_intent



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Likely Historical Inaccuracies, M/M, Post-Canon, That pre and post canon story, with slight differences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:41:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27243631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: “Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Kaysani, called al-Tayyib,” Yusuf said, pointing at himself. He had to repeat himself several times before the man frowned and glanced up at his face.“Yusuf,” the man said, pointing at him. He had to try a few times to get the intonation right, after which he carefully attempted the rest of Yusuf’s name, if with less success. It surprised Yusuf that he bothered, given what they’d been doing to each other. The man pointed back at his pale, gaunt face. “Nicolò di Genova.”
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 83
Kudos: 449





	Dust to Dust

**Author's Note:**

> I've tried my best, but there are probable historical inaccuracies through this story, so. Enjoy!
> 
> \--
> 
> For those readers trying this story without having watched the Old Guard, thanks for reading! It's a film on Netflix about people who for some reason cannot die for centuries -- until they can. Main trailer to give you an idea:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK-X2d0lJ_s  
> You might already have seen the kiss scene between Joe (Yusuf) and Nicky (Nicolo) floating around tumblr etc:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbnF9NbvRv8

Yusuf’s father Ibrahim whispered takbir into his ear after he was born—the firstborn child, a son and heir. It had been a difficult birth, long and agonising and bloody, and Yusuf’s mother was no longer young. The birth, Ibrahim would often say, was a miracle. That was why he wept as he breathed “Allāhu Akbar,” into the ear of an infant, over and over until his throat grew dry. 

God is great. 

Yusuf learned to speak takbir as he climbed a hill that overlooked the sprawling city of his birth, a graceful city of white and ochre by the sea. As he hit a bullseye with an arrow for the first time. When his sister was born: the second miracle. During the morning that he finally managed to beat his father in a duel, sending Ibrahim’s blade spinning across the sparring ground as his father threw back his head and laughed and laughed. As he burnt his fingers on freshly-fried, fragrant bambalouni, soaked in honey. As he made his daily prayers, kneeling in prostration over a land he had been born to love. In joy and gratitude, laughter and despair. 

Never in rage. Not when he learned how to kill. Not as the world around him began to disintegrate with the deaths of sultans and khalifs, which led to division and disunity. Not as war came upon them all of a sudden from the west, declared by people whom no one had thought much of a threat. Not as he stood on the walls of Jerusalem with his father, wondering why they were there. Not as he died his first death at the foot of a city far from the land of his birth; not as he killed the man who killed him with his last breath. As he died, now free from war—or so he thought at the time—Yusuf breathed takbir. 

When Yusuf returned to life, his father was dead. Blood soaked the stones of Jerusalem through the shattered gates, flowing like a river from the massed dead—women, children, everyone. Yusuf vomited as he struggled to his feet, knee-deep in corpses, and watched the man who had killed him stir awake. They strangled each other while drowning in viscera and filth, choking on the stench. They woke again and drowned again. Again, with rocks, anything they could reach. After that, Yusuf lost count—lost time.

Yusuf woke buried six deep under a pile of shattered limbs. Somehow, Yusuf managed the strength to dig himself free, gasping for air. The people who were preparing to torch the heap of corpses screamed as they saw him, scattering in fear even as Yusuf slipped over the arm of a dead child with wide, blank eyes and fell on his knees. He screamed as he got to his feet, then screamed again as an arrow slammed into his back, nearly knocking him onto his face. Yusuf lurched up to his feet and made it to the closest horse, jumping on. As he nudged it into a gallop, arrows whistling past, Yusuf grit his teeth and said nothing.

The man who killed him came upon Yusuf trying to scrub the blood and grime off his skin in a river. Yusuf got lucky—he managed to trip the man as they wrestled into the water, holding him down and drowning him. Sitting on the shore, panting, Yusuf stared at the body as it floated facedown in the water, blood and dirt seeping off in a murky cloud. Ill-fitting armour, poorly-kept sword. The man was a foot soldier of some sort, not a knight. That he’d even managed to kill Yusuf a few times in the first place was an embarrassment—Yusuf, who had been born Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Kaysani to a line of generals and scholars. That neither of them could stay dead was inexplicable.

As the man stirred in the water and sat up with a choked gasp, he froze as Yusuf pointed his sword at him. The man had sunk a hand’s breadth of the ugly thing into Yusuf’s back, where it’d stuck as Yusuf snarled and pounced on him. The wound, which should’ve been close to mortal, had already healed. 

“You live again,” Yusuf said. The man’s eyes stayed fixed on the sword—he did not understand Arabic. “Would you die if I cut off your head? If I burn your body to ash, perhaps. Scatter it into the sea?” He should try it. In his father’s name—in the name of everyone who had died in this pointless, puzzling war brought upon them for reasons Yusuf still failed to understand. Yet there had to be a reason why God had brought them back, over and over again. They were meant to live. 

“Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Kaysani, called al-Tayyib,” Yusuf said, pointing at himself. He had to repeat himself several times before the man frowned and glanced up at his face. 

“Yusuf,” the man said, pointing at him. He had to try a few times to get the intonation right, after which he carefully attempted the rest of Yusuf’s name, if with less success. It surprised Yusuf that he bothered, given what they’d been doing to each other. The man pointed back at his pale, gaunt face. “Nicolò di Genova.” 

“Nicolò di Genova.” Yusuf had better luck with Nicolò’s name. Unsurprisingly, Nicolò didn’t know any of the Tamazight dialects Yusuf spoke, or the version of Arabic spoken in Ifriqiya, or Aramaic, but he stiffened as Yusuf tried his rusty African Latin. 

“You speak Latin,” Nicolò said, surprised. 

“I speak five languages,” Yusuf said, annoyed by Nicolò’s tone. “Do you people think we are unlearned just because we’re different?” 

“I did not mean to imply…” Nicolò trailed off with a hoarse laugh, shaking his head, baring his teeth. “Have I lost my mind? I. I remember stabbing you with my sword. Now you hold it in your hand, and you do not look injured.”

“I remember killing you a few times. You live yet again. As do I.” 

Nicolò scowled. “What sort of dark heathen magic have you cursed us both with?”

“Life is a gift from God,” Yusuf shot back, “and I do not know any magic. The practice of dark magic is a major sin. If God intends us to live, to the point that we cannot die, then we are wasting His gift by repeatedly trying to kill each other. There must be a reason why He has done this.” 

“Your God.” 

“Our God is the same,” Yusuf said, surprised that Nicolò didn’t seem to know this. “We both recognise Ibrahim—Abraham—as our first prophet. I have read your Holy Book—parts of it refer to the same people as ours. We just think ours is more accurate. Further—”

Nicolò began to laugh. The sound tore loose from his throat, snarled up in grief and horror and despair. It silenced Yusuf, his grip tightening on the hilt of the blade. “I kneel in a river in a foreign land,” Nicolò whispered, “discussing theology with a revenant.” 

“I would hardly call this a discussion,” Yusuf said, frowning at Nicolò. “A discussion indicates an intellectual parity between us, while so far all I’ve heard from you is ignorance.” 

Nicolò began to bite out a retort and stopped, frowning to himself. He was silent for so long that Yusuf got to his feet, tiring of the situation. “I’m leaving,” Yusuf told him. “Stay away from me.”

#

“So. You live.”

“Hardly a surprise to you at this point,” Nicolò rasped as he sat up. He looked around, disoriented—he lay on the floor in what looked like a disused farmhouse of some sort, part of the roof long caved-in. A man he’d hoped not to see again leant against one of the intact walls, arms folded. Nicolò’s weapons lay in the dust at his feet.

Yusuf, like Nicolò, looked untouched by the half-century that had passed since they’d last met. Their armour was finer, their weapons a little different, but other than that, Yusuf’s grim, handsome brown face was the same as the one seared into Nicolò’s memory. Nicolò patted the back of his head gingerly. “What got me?”

“An arrow from my bow. I did not realise it was you until I closed in through the orchards.” 

“After which you decided to make off with my body?” Nicolò asked, surprised that he hadn’t woken up in chains. Or worse. 

“I have been looking for you. I met someone who you need to know,” Yusuf said, but would say nothing more even when Nicolò tried pressing him on the issue. 

Giving up, Nicolò leant wearily against the closest wall. He’d learnt from ugly experience that while he was a match for Yusuf in close combat, he was no match for him if Yusuf was armed and he was not. Nor a match for Yusuf if Yusuf had a bow. They’d killed each other fifty years ago now and then until the Crusade had dissipated, after which Nicolò had gone to live in Jerusalem. As the years passed and he didn’t age, he’d left the city to wander Damascus, only to get swallowed into yet another pointless war. 

“Does your holy book mention Methuselah?” Nicolò asked. Methuselah was the closest Nicolò could think of as a correlation to their situation. 

“Mattūshalakh,” Yusuf said, “the grandfather of Nuh ibn Lumik, who you know as Noah.” 

“Perhaps this is the same thing. The reason why he lived for so long was because he could not die.” 

Yusuf was already shaking his head. “When you meet this new person, you will understand.” He paused. “Or not. She is a difficult person. Try not to make her angry.”

“A woman?” Nicolò said, surprised, but Yusuf scowled and glanced at the door. It took a while before Nicolò heard a faint step beyond. As he tensed up, a person strode through the door, shrouded in a heavy cloak that hid their face, pinned over a patchwork set of leather and steel armour of a make that Nicolò had never seen. They wore a double-bladed axe slung at their back and a straight sword at their hip. They tugged up the cloak, glancing between Nicolò and Yusuf, revealing a hard-eyed, sharp-cheeked face. 

“This is the one?” the stranger asked, in archaically structured Latin. 

Yusuf nodded. “Nicolò di Genova.”

“I am Andromache the Scythian,” said Andromache in a brisk tone. “I presume you have the same questions as your friend here—”

“—Not his friend,” Yusuf muttered. 

Andromache ignored him. “We are functionally immortal—for now. Frozen at the age where we first begin to come back to life. There were more like us, but for now, the three of us are all I know.” 

“Were?” Nicolò asked. 

“One… died. His gift, or curse, however you want to see it, stopped working one day. I do not know why. The other was thrown into the sea in an iron maiden.” Hatred and grief twisted briefly over Andromache’s face. “I have been looking for her since. I would like the two of you to help me.”

Thrown into the sea. Nicolò shivered, staring at his hands. “A… a small young woman? With long dark hair and dark eyes?” 

Andromache took a step forward, coming alert all at once—turning from a picture of stillness to a poised hawk. “You have seen her in visions?” 

“Bad dreams.” Nicolò squeezed his eyes shut. “There is a boat; then, she is sinking. Down and down into the dark, dying over and over. That is when I wake up. Her fury wakes me up.” He looked helplessly at Yusuf. “That is why I thought I was losing my mind. I kept seeing her. Especially at the beginning.” 

“We share visions of each other dying, apparently,” Yusuf said. He didn’t sound pleased. 

“I have seen the two of you. That is how I found you.” Andromache glanced at Yusuf, then at Nicolò. “The two of you have been making a habit of killing each other.” 

“Who have you seen?” Nicolò asked Yusuf. 

Yusuf grimaced but made a tiny gesture in Andromache’s direction. “I already knew her before I even met her.”

“You still tried to kill me,” Andromache said, though she smiled a sharp, hard smile. Yusuf grunted and looked sour about the memory. “Either way. Nicolò, help me. If you can see Quynh in your dreams, your visions may be able to help me find my friend. You are a priest. Are you not meant to help people?” 

“Him? A holy man?” Yusuf said, incredulous. 

Andromache ignored Yusuf. “Nicolò. Please.” 

“I never see very much,” Nicolò said, unsettled by the rawness of Andromache’s hope and grief. “I do not know how much help I’ll be.” 

“Leave him,” Yusuf said with a curl to his lip. “He lacks compassion. His people invaded us without provocation. Murdered women and children in the streets—”

“I have been alive for a long time,” Andromache said, with a harsh laugh. “War is largely the same everywhere. No righteousness, no glory. Largely overblown, often because of lies. People will make war over the smallest of issues. A single beautiful woman. Land, money, lies, I’ve seen it all. We are all beasts, moved easily toward violence.” 

Yusuf grumbled something under his breath in a language Nicolò couldn’t pick out. Andromache sniffed. “Is that Aramaic? I taught myself a version of it a hundred years ago. That is something you’d both have to learn to do as well. Keep learning new languages. The ones you were born to may eventually die or change out of recognition, and you’d need to be able to fit in. Language will be the first thing that marks you as someone different.” 

“Fit in?” Nicolò asked. 

“Or risk being caught, tried as warlocks and witches, and thrown into the sea within an iron maiden.” Andromache looked Nicolò in the eyes, her expression set tight. “Help me.” 

“She is no longer asking,” Yusuf warned. 

“I see that.” Nicolò got slowly to his feet. “Fine. I’ll help you.”

“He’ll stab us in the back,” Yusuf said, as Andromache nodded and motioned for Yusuf to return Nicolò his weapons. “He has done that to me before.” 

“We’ll survive a stab or two,” Andromache said, as Yusuf tossed Nicolò his sword, “though, just for your reference? I’ll only forgive you once, priest. After that, I’ll make you regret it.”

#

After half a century spent crossing back and forth over the sea, Yusuf left Andromache to it, choosing to return to Ifriqiya. At the deep exhalation of relief that Yusuf made after he set foot back at the port in Tunis, Nicolò laughed. “Has it been that bad?” he asked, amused.

Yusuf ignored the gentle jibe. He murmured takbir as he looked fondly at the bustling port, at the knots of people pushing through the streets, painting it the colour of chaos. Of the scents he could catch in the air, of the graceful cityscape that he knew and did not know. “A bath,” Yusuf said, “then something to eat that isn’t ship rations.” 

“That is the fifth time you’ve said that this morning,” Nicolò said. He glanced over his shoulder. Andromache wasn’t wasting time weighing anchor at the harbour. “Do you think she’ll forgive us for leaving?” 

“We have already given her five decades of our time.” Whether Andromache chose to forgive them or not was of little interest to Yusuf. “Besides, you have not had any dreams of Quynh for years. God willing, perhaps she is finally at rest.” 

Yusuf liked Andromache well enough, and five decades of sparring with Andromache had improved Yusuf immensely as a warrior, but he owed her nothing more. Yusuf picked through the port with Nicolò beside him, though Nicolò pulled the hood of his cloak over his face. His sun-browned skin might pass with little comment here, but there was no hiding the colour of his eyes. 

“I hope so,” Nicolò murmured. He looked around inquisitively as they walked through the crowds, tensing up whenever anyone got too close and shifting nearer to Yusuf. Yusuf bit down on a laugh of his own. Fifty years ago, had anyone told him that he’d someday grow close to a man like Nicolò, he’d have rolled his eyes. 

Yusuf’s family estate was in a quiet part of Tunis, with a distant view of Zaytuna Mosque. “It has been fifty years,” Nicolò said as they made their way up a slope. “Would anyone still remember you?” 

“We’ll see.” Yusuf’s breathing quickened a little as he walked. “I should not have stayed away for so long.” 

“Andromache warned us to forget our families.” 

“Andromache does not wear her lineage in her name,” Yusuf said. It was not what he wanted to say, but he had no other way of saying it. 

Time had stripped away everything from the woman who had all but forced them both into her personal quest for half a century, turning her into little more than an avatar of violence, driven to survive. That she had been willing to spend decades searching the sea for her friend had surprised Yusuf, but he’d often wondered whether that had been the true reason—or whether Andromache had simply needed some form of purpose. Some reason to keep waking up again in the morning. The thought of what time had done to her, and what time would do to Yusuf in turn had unsettled him. She had come to this because she had abandoned or torn away all that she was. Yusuf could not. 

The courtyard and its sparring ground were familiar, though the trees that shaded the overlook were not. A little boy and a girl playing with a ball froze as Yusuf crossed the courtyard. The girl frowned, stepping in front of the boy as she looked them both over. “Who are you?” she demanded, in a bold tone that was so familiar that Yusuf let out a startled laugh. House guards came forward protectively, hands on their weapons, even as a tall woman emerged from around the house. She gasped as she saw Yusuf, darting over. The boy ducked behind her, but the girl stayed where she was.

“Are you…” The woman trailed off. She glanced at Nicolò, then back at Yusuf and his armour. Likely fifty years out of date now. 

“I am a friend of this house,” Yusuf said, in the words he had given to his sister a hundred years ago, words that she had agreed to pass down through her line. There was little of his fierce sister in the woman that he could see. More in the little girl before her who stared suspiciously at them both. 

“Then you are welcome here,” the woman said after a pause, replying with the words that Yusuf’s sister, Sara, had said that her descendants would speak. She invited them into the house, though her hospitality felt nervous and reserved. Yusuf washed quickly, trimmed his beard, and changed into the clean clothes that were provided. Nicolò waved him off, choosing to take his time. Yusuf strolled out over the sparring ground, studying the view of the city. It was busier than what he remembered. Wealthier.

“Are you really a djinn?” 

Yusuf turned. The little girl walked cautiously over to him, pulling her brother behind her. Yusuf concentrated, recalling the rush of introductions at the gate. Ayesha, that was her name. Ayesha and Hamid. “Who told you that I was a djinn?” Yusuf asked, amused, though he knew full well who spread that tale. Sara had thought it a hilarious joke at his expense. 

_It’ll explain everything,_ she’d said, smirking. _Why you never age. Why you’d pop up now and then, like a bad smell._ Yusuf had pretended to get angry. _I am a bad smell, am I? Very well! I’m never visiting you again._ She’d laughed in his face. _I would like to see you try and stay away from your nephews. They have got you wrapped around their fingers._

How long ago had that been? 

“Everyone. You are not made of fire, though.” Ayesha squinted at him as she walked closer. “And you walked here. You should be able to travel vast distances by flying or something if you were a djinn.” 

“Who made you the expert on djinns?” Yusuf asked, chuckling. 

“You speak strangely,” Ayesha said, scowling. 

“I have been away for a while.” The languages Yusuf had grown up with were already different. He hadn’t heard any Tamazight dialects spoken on his way up to the estate, and a hundred years had changed the Arabic he had learned as a boy in both obvious and subtle ways. 

“How long will you stay this time?” 

“I do not know.” Yusuf had missed Tunis, but he didn’t want to leech off his family’s graces. Not when he hadn’t yet even met Ayesha’s father. He’d brought gifts for the family, as was his custom, but it’d been unsettling to realise that he’d been away when his sister's grandchildren had passed. That he didn’t even remember their faces. 

“If you are meant to be a friend of the family, how can we summon you if we need you?” Ayesha asked. 

“Remember me to your children, and your children’s children, and if any of you need me—I will be there. Inshallah,” Yusuf said, a promise that he would never be able to keep.

#

Plague—it had to be plague. It’d been a hundred years since his promise to Ayesha, but Yusuf felt hollowed out as he turned his back on Tunis, riding out inland with no destination in mind. How hard could it be to defend one family against everything that time could throw at it? So Yusuf had thought at the time. He’d cared for his sister’s descendants the way he would’ve cared for a tree, not seeing the rot that had come up through its leaves, spread from others in the forest. Beside him, Nicolò shot Yusuf the occasional worried glance but said little. He’d helped Yusuf with the burial rites, never complaining.

“Yusuf,” Nicolò said as they stopped for the night behind a copse of trees. 

“Don’t.”

“You tried to get them to leave. You did all you could.”

“Don’t.” 

“Sara might have more descendants out there. You lost track of them while we were with Andromache, and we have not always kept a close eye on—”

“ _Don’t_.” Yusuf unsaddled his horse, brushing it down with numb fingers. Time exhausted him all of a sudden. Was this what Andromache meant when she’d warned him to leave his family? That not to do so would break him, or them, or both? Nicolò went quiet. He cooked something Yusuf didn’t remember eating, and snuggled up against Yusuf as they prepared to sleep, their weapons within easy reach. 

“I think we should look for Andromache again,” Yusuf said, as Nicolò’s breathing grew more even. Nicolò hummed his assent without opening his eyes. This closeness between them—was it because they had no choice? Or was it fate? Some days it felt as though Nicolò was the last real thing in Yusuf’s world, the only constant. Nicolò was the last breath he heard when he slept, the first touch of warmth when he woke. The fact that they’d first met by trying to kill each other felt like a distant, ugly joke, one that Yusuf sometimes found hard to believe. 

Andromache had smiled sadly the last time she’d visited Tunis. “I tried that once too,” she told Yusuf as they ate makroudh in the shade, licking the honey that the baked date-filled pastry was soaked in off their fingers. “You and Nicolò. Lykon was his name.” She still spoke Aramaic with an archaic intonation, though she was also practising a version of Arabic that she’d picked up from elsewhere. 

“I have seen him, I think.” Yusuf had once had the occasional bad dream about Lykon. Every time the man had died, he’d feel so hopeful—then disappointed. All the way till the last. 

“I wish you both luck,” Andromache said, in place of what she obviously preferred to say. The next morning, she was gone. 

As Yusuf tried to think of where Andromache might be, Nicolò said, “Andromache said that she could usually be found in the middle of a good fight.” 

“That doesn’t narrow down the field.” War appeared to be an essential part of the human experience. 

“I heard the sailors at port mention a great war between the House of Plantagenet and the House of Valois. Over the right to rule France. She might be there.” 

Yusuf shuddered. “I do not understand why she seeks out war.” 

“Do you not?” Nicolò looked up at Yusuf curiously. “I thought it was obvious.” At Yusuf’s frown, Nicolò said, “She wants to die, but on her terms. Through the only way she’s known how to die—going down fighting.” 

“You are probably right.” Would that be them too in another hundred years, a thousand years? Desperate to die? Yusuf twisted against Nicolò, burying his mouth in his hair. Nicolò hummed something tunelessly, stroking his arm. 

“We do not have to find her,” Nicolò said. “We could go somewhere else.” 

“Where?”

“Anywhere. This world we live in is vast. Even if we live forever, we’ll never see all of it. Not every corner of it, not in a way that matters. We could try.”

“We should try,” Yusuf said, even though he had little interest in travel. To go far from everything he had been born to, to submerge himself in the unknown. “Where first?” 

“I haven’t been back for a long time,” Nicolò said, sounding reflective. “I suppose I’m curious.” 

“To your home?” Yusuf shifted up on an elbow. “Nicolò, I should have known. I have kept you here for so long—I’m sorry.”

“You are my home. Home for me stopped being a mere place a long time ago,” Nicolò said. He brushed a teasing kiss over Yusuf’s mouth, the latest of many. Yusuf didn’t even remember how it’d started. They’d been on Andromache’s ship, in the middle of nowhere, he remembered that much. Remembered the taste of salt between them but not the reason, not the rest. Sometimes that bothered him. Could Yusuf be losing time, even with Nicolò? Human minds were not built to hold entire centuries. 

Yusuf settled for pressing Nicolò into the grass instead of speaking. He stroked his thumbs against his cheek, compressed his devotion in shaky breaths between them. The years so far had declined to break them, but would the breaking point come? Yusuf had seen lovers cleave from each other over petty things, seen people fall out of love and grow apart. He knew better than to assume that immortality would somehow give him and Nicolò immunity. They were only human, and conflict was part of human nature. 

“Nicolò,” Yusuf murmured. He wanted to say more, but wasn’t sure how to. He’d broken one promise already. Nicolò waited, stroking his cheek, breathing slowly. “Love is not an easy thing,” Yusuf said, after a moment’s thought. “It is an illness of the soul.” 

Nicolò started to laugh. He kissed Yusuf between his eyes. “Here I was thinking you were about to say something romantic.” 

“It is a fever that consumes me when you are near,” Yusuf said, kissing the tips of Nicolò’s fingers. “It strips me of my reason. It puts words in my mouth and shakes my heart against my ribs. It eats me whole and has taught me the meaning of pain. Every day, I praise God for the pain. I would feed this illness forever if I could, for while God has decreed that I cannot yet die, I willingly burn the strange life I have now in your name.”

“There it is,” Nicolò said, smiling tenderly. “How do these things come out of your mouth so easily? You should have been a poet.” 

“You are the one who has made me a poet,” Yusuf said, and pressed a lingering kiss over Nicolò’s mouth. “Your presence both devours me and frees me.” 

“I wish I had the words to tell you how much I love you,” Nicolò said, shifting to hold Yusuf against him, “and how much I wish that there was still more for you to love. Andromache was wrong about family where you were concerned.” 

“She was,” Yusuf whispered, and now—only now—could he mourn.

#

Andromache looked unsurprised to see them at Rhodes, albeit at the opposite sides of the siege—Yusuf and Nicolò with Suleiman, Andromache with the Knights Hospitalier. They’d caught a glimpse of her on the walls of the Knights’ island stronghold, though she’d withdrawn soon after and they didn’t run into her during the day’s failed assault on the fortress. As Suleiman deliberated the fate of Mustafa Pasha for the failure, Nicolò drew Yusuf aside in the exhausted camp, past the triage area of moaning soldiers. They spoke quietly in Latin to deter eavesdroppers.

“You saw her too?” Nicolò said.

Yusuf nodded slowly. “During the first assault weeks ago. Not during today’s.” 

“Do you think she left?” Surely Andromache would’ve been obvious to the both of them on the battlefield. They’d run into her now and then over the centuries. Almost always where there’d been a fight close at hand. Each time, the swathe of bloody violence she’d cut through the ranks had been unsettling. Andromache had once told Nicolò that Gods surely did not exist, because once she had been worshipped as a God. He could see why. 

“I doubt it,” Yusuf said. He looked grim. Yusuf was still ambivalent over Andromache, and Nicolò could never figure out why. Andromache cared for them in her way. Perhaps Yusuf blamed her for causing them to be away at sea for so long that his family had forgotten his face. 

Nicolò couldn’t ever resent Andromache for that. Those five decades had been his gain, selfish as it was to think of them that way. Without being forced into close quarters with Yusuf for so long, Nicolò wasn’t sure that he’d ever have become friends with Yusuf. Let alone lovers. 

“Did you want to join her?” Nicolò asked. Yusuf let out a loud snort. Over the years, Yusuf had grown less and less inclined to get involved in armed conflicts. _A waste of our gifts_ , he would often tell Nicolò, who knew better. Yusuf wasn’t afraid of conflict or death. Not his own, at least. Nicolò could commiserate. His greatest fear was to die—only to reawaken to find that Yusuf hadn’t revived with him. It fed his nightmares now and then. More than the death-memories of the long dead. 

“Join who?” Andromache said. 

Yusuf turned, his hand dropping to the scimitar at his hip. Andromache’s hard smile ghosted out of the shadows behind the tents, a hood drawn over the rest of her face. Nicolò set a palm on Yusuf’s shoulder. “Andromache,” Nicolò said. 

“No ‘it is good to see you’ this time?” Andromache asked. Her Latin was as archaic as ever. 

“That depends on whether you are here for a fight,” Yusuf said, wary. 

“I’m here _to_ fight. I do not care about which side,” Andromache said with a dismissive wave. “On this side of the wall or the other, it makes no difference to me.” 

“You have no loyalty to your friends?” Nicolò asked. 

“Normal people come and go in my life, all too quickly. I cannot remember any of them long enough to recall their names, let alone hold any loyalty to them. While I’ll be seeing the two of you for a long time. If you are both fighting on Suleiman’s side, then I’ll fight on Suleiman’s side,” Andromache said, indifferent. 

“He is a great man,” Yusuf told her. “An accomplished poet, a scholar, a—”

“Yes, yes,” Andromache said, folding her arms. “His name will live on in history and all that, I’m sure.” Yusuf bristled, and Andromache held up a palm. “I’m not belittling him. I’m just. Yusuf, in my very long experience, there has never been any adequate justification for war.” 

Yusuf stared at her incredulously, even as Nicolò said, “But you take part in so much of it.” 

“Lykon died in battle. Perhaps that is the only way we can die. Not that it has happened as yet. Either way, I do not care which side I’m on. It is the same to me, one war in a line of many. Someday all this will just be a brief footnote in history. Same as all the wars I’ve been in, from here into antiquity.” 

Yusuf exhaled in annoyance. “Come and talk to Suleiman with me.” 

Andromache drew herself up, her hands curling. “You told him about us? Yusuf. That is the one thing I have told you not to do.” 

“He is different,” Yusuf said. 

Andromache glanced at Nicolò, who stayed quiet. Nicolò liked Suleiman well enough, but he didn’t admire him. The only person Nicolò admired was Yusuf, and maybe Andromache. The pall of mortality hung over everyone else he met, overshadowing any opinion Nicolò could have cared to hold about them. Even as he tried. It eroded any instinctive empathy he could feel, any sense of shared humanity or sentiment. It surprised him again and again that Yusuf did not seem to be the same. 

“All right,” Andromache said, smiling, “though I do not expect to be impressed. No one is different. Other than us.”

#

“Is this the only thing left in life that excites you?” Nicolò whispered as they stood in line under scrawled graffiti in an alley, deep within the heart of a maze of merchants, butchers, and esoteric shops. They’d been to Nablus before the khan had been built, passing through the ancient city now and then during the Ottoman era. Less so, over time, until Yusuf had discovered the place they were queueing for now.

“ _You_ excite me,” Yusuf whispered back. They were careful to speak in Latin still, at least for matters like this in public. For everything else, they practised one new language at a time until Yusuf was satisfied that they were close enough to pass.

Nicolò laughed. Had they been alone, Nicolò would have taken Yusuf into his arms, bitten him as they kissed. Centuries had eroded the boundaries between them, their love evolving into something more than the first heated flush of passion. More than the deep romantic friendship that had settled in over time. More than the unspoken partnership that had rooted itself under the bulwark of what they were to each other. They were still their own people—no amount of love could change that. Yet the borders of who they were as people had long grown enmeshed with each other. 

They did not finish each other’s sentences, did not grow jealous of each other’s company. They still quarrelled, at least once a week, often over something forgettable. The thing between them was still imperfect. For that Yusuf was grateful, for imperfect things understood the need for growth. They’d argued this morning as it was, over coming all the way to Nablus just to satisfy Yusuf’s craving for a snack. This part of the world was not always an easy place for both of them to be. Yusuf tended to forget himself, to refer to places long renamed, people long dead.

It was worth the trouble. As they drew close to the front of the line, the silver-moustached man in a black apron before the massive pan spread semolina the colour of a summer morning on the steel, then crumbled pale Nablus goat cheese on top. A burner beneath the pan toasted the semolina, caramelising it slowly into a golden brown. A second pan was placed on top, the cigarette on the man’s mouth quivering as he flipped them both. The crowd watched, mesmerised, time freezing in the balmy air. The pans were flipped again, for a final sear. 

The man lifted the pan off the stove. “Bismillah!” he cried, raising it over his head and reversing it for the last time, setting it cheese-side down. He opened the pan, drenching the browned surface with syrup, and carried the pan out of the kitchen. 

There was never much hope of getting seated at Al-Aqsa, so Nicolò and Yusuf settled for eating their wedges of knafeh close to the bright blue doors. Crunchy, sticky, savoury, and sweet, flavoured with rose water and orange blossom. Yusuf wolfed down the dessert, burning his tongue. 

As they returned the plates to the man with the silver moustache, he looked curiously at them both. “Have I seen you both before? Over the years?” he asked. 

Nicolò tensed, but Yusuf said, “Who could resist coming back for your knafeh? It is the best in the world.” 

The man looked at Nicolò, then back at Yusuf. A man who Yusuf had watched grow up over the years as they returned to Al-Aqsa for its famous dessert. Older and older until silver had touched his hair. He smiled warmly. “Perhaps age is getting to me. Where are you both from?” 

“Tunis,” Yusuf said, though they had not lived in Tunis for half a millennium. They lived nowhere now, forever hopping through a series of properties that they maintained over the years in a ‘trust fund’ that Booker had helped them set up under a ‘shell company’. Yusuf still found the modern concept of finance inexplicable, as much as he always tried to learn. Nicolò had given up a long time ago. 

“Ah-h-h. Beautiful city. Another plate?” 

They had another plate, tense as Nicolò was. After that, as they walked away, Nicolò said, “That was dangerous.” 

“The world is growing smaller.” It didn’t help that they made for a recognisable pair. “Strange.”

“What is strange?”

“That after two massive wars, with so much that has changed for the better, the world feels more dangerous, not less.” 

“There hasn’t been a new one of us for a while,” Nicolò said. Though, that didn’t mean anything, according to Andromache. There’d been a long span of time between them and Booker. Booker, who had adapted to the rapidly changing new world far more quickly than the rest of them—particularly Andromache. Yusuf made an effort every morning to try. To update the languages he now spoke, to try and get used to the technology now prevalent everywhere. 

As they walked away, Yusuf’s phone buzzed. It was Booker. “Could the both of you get to New York by tomorrow or so?” Booker asked. “Same place.” 

“Work?” Yusuf glanced at Nicolò, who shrugged. “You know I don’t like going there.” Three years ago, when they’d gone south through the USA to meet Booker, Yusuf had been fatally shot coming out of a convenience store in Kansas. The man who’d gotten him had shouted something about terrorists just before Nicolò snapped his neck. It had been a further complication at the time. 

Land of the free.

“I can get you both in on a private flight,” Booker said, a persuasive argument.

During the only time Yusuf and Nicolò had tried to fly commercial into the USA, Nicolò had wandered out of customs easily enough. As the border officer had drawn a large ‘P’ over Yusuf’s immigration card and led him away, Nicolò had turned, hands clenching. Yusuf met his eyes, shaking his head. After being thoroughly frisked, Yusuf had gotten stuck in questioning for so long that he’d briefly contemplated fighting his way out. The only reason he didn’t was because of the sheer absurdity of circumstance. Yusuf was indeed likely the most dangerous person the customs officers would’ve met all day, a man who’d been familiar with the ways of war for nearly a thousand years. Yet he’d been picked out because of his name. 

In the holding pen, there were two other men also named Yusuf, one of them a middle school teacher, the other a doctor. They’d joked about changing their names to Joe John Smith Jones, each of them knowing that they could never easily do such a thing. To give up their names in a world that had already taken so much from them. Not even for something like this. There was a reason that family was part of their names. Even for Yusuf, who could now barely remember his father’s face. 

“Fine,” Yusuf said. “We’re in Nablus.” 

“I’ll arrange something and call back. Oh, hey, Nablus? Could you get me some baklava? Ooh, and Nabulsi cheese. I’ll pay you back.” 

“We’ll buy it, but I can’t guarantee we won’t eat it on the way there,” Yusuf said, chuckling. His amusement lasted to the private airstrip, where it soured all over again. 

“We don’t have to go,” Nicolò said as they climbed into the stripped-down smuggler’s plane. 

Yusuf kissed him on the jaw, then sat down and strapped himself to a seat, setting Booker’s boxes of snacks aside. “You know why we have to go.” None of them still needed to work, given the investments Booker had taught them to make, nor did Yusuf believe in the need for a purpose. ‘Work’ was simply the way Andromache had chosen to find a way to die, and by now, all of them felt that they owed it to her to be there to see it. 

In New York, as they walked to the usual meeting point, a white man stared at Yusuf, mimed a bomb blast, and said “Allahu Akbar,” with a mocking sneer. Yusuf stared evenly at the man, who took a step forward, drew himself up short, made an obscene gesture and walked away. Yusuf relaxed. “All right?” Nicolò asked, setting his hand on the small of Yusuf’s back.

Yusuf wished it hadn’t gotten easier and easier to let things slide. To listen to takbir from the mouths of people who couldn’t see beyond the colour of his skin. In the beginning, it’d been tempting to react to violence with violence, knowing that Nicolò would back him up either way. It was hardly ever worth the trouble, and besides, the ignorant were only part of the problem. Yusuf glanced at the people walking by, all of whom had pretended not to hear anything. He did not blame them for their apathy. Their country had been sick for a long time, even as it tried to pretend that it wasn’t, and apathy would keep it that way.

“Let’s see what Booker wants and get out of here,” Yusuf said.

#

Yusuf was one of the calmest people now whom Nicolò knew. A defence mechanism, perhaps, as much armour to Yusuf as the mail he’d once worn over his shoulders. Outside of threats to their well-being, very little could get him going. Yusuf had come a long way from the man Nicolò had first met, knee-deep in corpses at the foot of Jerusalem.

As Yusuf stalked off to take a walk, Nile looked bewildered, standing beside the pool in their villa in Malta. Zurrieq was gorgeously sunny at this time of year, lush and warm. The latest member of their not-quite-immortal team had dressed for the occasion in a sundress, a bag slung over her chest, the offending book still held awkwardly in her coffee-dark hands. 

“Sorry about that,” Nicolò said, stifling a laugh. “Yusuf gets that way whenever he sees a Rumi translation.”

“He doesn’t like Rumi?” Nile asked, looking over at where Yusuf had disappeared through the gate. 

“He doesn’t like the translations,” Nicolò said, with a nod at the cover. “Yusuf taught himself Fārsi to read Rumi’s poems in their original form. We chased him down once in Konya to talk to him, and they became good friends. The Masnavi is Yusuf’s favourite work of literature.” 

“Oh, right.” Nile let out a nervous laugh. “Whew! So Andy knew Rodin, and y’all were friends with Rumi? Wow. Every time I remember how old y’all are, I just. Can’t seem to hold on to that fact. Uh, sorry. I didn’t know. I’ll apologise.”

“Don’t bother. He isn’t angry with you.” 

“Are the translations that bad?” Nile turned the book over in her hands, then squished it into her bag furtively as though expecting Yusuf to pop back into view at any minute. 

“Some of the popular ones like the one you’re holding are. They cut the culture and religion out of the verse. Some of the translators don’t even read Fārsi, they just rewrote translations from the 19th century to suit themselves.” 

“I maybe get that,” Nile said, nodding slowly. “It’s like how people are with Black culture, but not Black people. Like they love the part of people like me that’s easy to love, but not the rest. Don’t want to see it, don’t want to think about it. Sure as hell don’t want to put in the work to make things better, too.” 

“That’s right,” Nicolò said. Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise him that Nile understood. She’d been quicker to grasp the enormity of what they were, quicker than he had been. Of how they had to live their lives. Speaking of which. “By the way,” Nicolò said as he walked back into the villa, “we don’t always agree with Andy.”

“Over what?” Nile asked, following him in. Nicolò had been making focaccia when Nile had happened upon them, his hands still floury to the elbows. 

“Family, for example.” As Nile stiffened, Nicolò headed back to the kitchen bench, where he’d been kneading the dough. “Yusuf used to check in on his sister, Sara. Then on her descendants. We did that for… hm, I’ve forgotten. At least a hundred years. Probably longer.” 

“Why’d you both stop?” Nile asked, if gently.

“A plague epidemic in Tunis took the people we knew. I told Yusuf that there were likely more descendants out there. Sara had a big family, and we lost track of them for a time when we were with Andromache, looking for Quynh. He didn’t want to. I think he was afraid of disappointment.” 

“Big family, huh?” Nile looked wistful. “I know what that’s like. Booker, though. Booker told me what happened to his family.”

“Families aren’t the same across the board. How could they be? People are so different. Yusuf’s family accepted him for what he was, more or less. Across generations. I think he became a sort of living heirloom, a shared family secret. Perhaps yours would be the same.” 

“What about… what about yours? If you don’t mind me asking.” 

“Never knew my parents. I was a church foundling. It’s why I went on the so-called First Crusade. I’d grown up living and breathing the only story I’d ever been told about the world until I believed it too. That there were faithful to be saved to the east from monsters and all that.” Nicolò let out a dry laugh. “Yusuf used to like pointing out my ignorance in great detail. He was often right.” 

“Oh. Uh, hey. Could I help?” Nile asked, and was dutifully taking the leaves off fresh rosemary stems when Yusuf reappeared. He smiled warmly at Nile as though he hadn’t stormed off at the sight of her book only an hour ago, kissed Nicolò on the cheek, and wandered deeper into the villa. 

Nile walked off after lunch in the direction of the beach, and Yusuf tilted his head as Nicolò drew him into a kiss in the kitchen. “Isn’t this against one of your rules?” Yusuf asked, though he grinned and kissed Nicolò back. 

“Kissing is fine. It’s when you start pulling my pants open that I draw the line,” Nicolò said, nuzzling Yusuf’s jaw. “By the way, you gave Nile a shock.” 

“I know. I spoke to her just now, but she said you’d already explained things.” Yusuf frowned slightly. “Then she made yet another one of her strange analogies. Said she’d be upset too if people translated Beyoncé and stripped the words flat. This Beyoncé must be a great poet, if Nile thought of them in the same vein as Mawlānā.” 

“I don’t know if she meant it that way,” Nicolò said, “though I guess we could look it up.” He washed his hands and chuckled as Yusuf nipped him on the back of his neck. “Really? Nile could be back at any time.” 

“I remember what it was like when we first visited Malta. She won’t be back until dark.” Yusuf waited until Nicolò dried his hands, then chivvied him playfully but firmly through the villa. 

Their bedroom overlooked the garden, kept trimmed by a visiting gardener who was the fourth generation now that they used. Tumbling into a bed whose sheets had to be changed anew now and them, but whose heavy frame was among the oldest furniture in the house, built of oak. They kissed as they stripped each other of their clothes, with fingers that moved in a pattern memorised since before many of the monuments on the islands had even been built, tracing patterns that they’d long scoured into their souls. 

Nicolò let out a strangled noise as Yusuf pulled off their shirts, as Yusuf’s beard brushed against the arch of his throat. “I like you clean-shaven,” Yusuf said, nuzzling his jaw. “I like watching the marks I leave on you fade as I make them. A reminder that you are as yet still untouchable.” 

“We both know that’s not true,” Nicolò said, as he eased off their belts one-handed, his free hand stroking Yusuf’s cheek. “The end—it could come at any time.” Andromache’s sudden loss of her immortality had shocked them both. Would she now age? Grow grey and stooped, and pass from their lives? Nicolò could barely imagine it. 

Yusuf sobered, though as he looked up, Nicolò caught him into a thorough kiss, their tongues tangling. “Someday our time will come. I can only pray that it will come concurrently,” Yusuf said.

“Does it worry you?” 

“No.” Yusuf helped Nicolò kick off the rest of their clothes, until they pressed naked against each other, sweat prickling over their skin from the warm afternoon. 

It surprised Nicolò sometimes that they could still take their time with each other like this, like young lovers exploring their bodies. Even though they knew every part of each other by now. Nicolò knew Yusuf’s body better than he knew his own. Knew that Yusuf would laugh as Nicolò grazed his teeth against the hollow of Yusuf's throat, knew how Yusuf’s breathing would quicken as he scratched his nails over his balls. They’d sketched this dance between them so many times, for so long that there should have been nothing left of it that was anything new, and yet. Each time they went to bed together, it felt new all over again. Each shuddering breath that Yusuf made against his ear, each bitten-off gasp in languages long-dead against his throat. 

Yusuf grumbled something as he reared back to sift through the side table for lube. Nicolò went up on his elbows, peering. “If we’re out, I could get some olive oil from the kitchen,” Nicolò said.

“Let us not give me a complex about olive oil again,” Yusuf said. Nicolò laughed. Yusuf had been relieved when they no longer had to use olive oil to slick things between them. Said his brain could finally maybe not go to the wrong places whenever he watched Nicolò drizzle it on their food. “Ah. Here.” He located the tube and leant back over Nicolò, kissing him as he lubed up his fingers and slipped his hand between them. Yusuf began to curl his palm over Nicolò’s cock, only to make an inquiring sound as Nicolò shifted his hand lower, between his thighs. 

“If we spend all afternoon in bed, I won’t have the time to prep dinner,” Nicolò said, “and we have a surprise guest.”

“You and your need to compensate for guests,” Yusuf said, though he obligingly pressed a finger within him, easing it in to the knuckle as Nicolò caught his lip between his teeth with a soft moan. “We could drive down to Mamounia.” 

“Maybe tomorrow.” Nicolò tucked a heel against Yusuf’s ass, urging him on. 

They kissed breathlessly as Yusuf opened him up with tender purpose, as he hitched up Nicolò’s hips, pushing carefully inside him. Yusuf always grew so quiet when he was deep within Nicolò, in a way that Nicolò treasured. That the oldest act of intimacy between them could leave a man with such a graceful tongue so shaken that he could say nothing. That they could be doing little more than rocking slowly against each other, but it would all feel new again, each press of Yusuf within him, pushed just right, each moan that trembled through Yusuf as Nicolò clenched down. Nicolò dug his nails down Yusuf’s back, licking the sweat off his skin. Savouring the miracle of time between them, the impossibility of it. Breathing it in until Yusuf’s hips stuttered to a stop against him, as Nicolò bucked with a shout into Yusuf’s grasp, his cock pulsing.

#

Yusuf studied the strange red skeletal sculpture in the garden with a frown. He’d never quite been able to understand contemporary art, despite several genuine attempts to do so. Art, literature, and music had evolved through time along with human endeavour. Yusuf had managed to adapt to the latter two, but his taste in art had stayed firmly centuries-old, to Nicolò’s amusement.

“Why did Nile insist that we come here again?” Yusuf complained, dragging his heels as Nicolò tried to hustle them into the building. Blocky and grey, B’Chira Art Centre’s hyper-modern structure presided in glass and stone over a manicured garden with elegant trees and strange sculptures.

“You’ll see,” Nicolò said, grabbing his elbow and tugging. 

“We’ve been here before,” Yusuf said, though he allowed Nicolò to pull him along. “I’d much rather go to the Bardo.”

“We always go to the Bardo.” Nicolò led Yusuf through a well-lit space with high ceilings, through toward an exhibition space in white and slate. 

Paintings hung on the walls, described in stark colours and abstract profiles. Yusuf gave them all a sour glance, then froze. Beside one of the larger paintings, a woman in jeans talked excitedly to a pair of other women, her hands sweeping in elegant arcs dangerously close to the canvas. 

She looked exactly like Sara. 

Yusuf looked sharply at Nicolò, who smiled with mock innocence. “She…?” 

“I told you we should have looked.” 

“How did Nile even…? Or was this you?”

“It was all her. Nile tried to explain how she’d done it to me, but it was very convoluted, and I couldn’t quite understand it,” Nicolò said, folding his hands behind his back and pretending to admire one of the pieces. “Go on, then.” 

Yusuf squeezed Nicolò’s arm in place of everything else he wished to say. He waited for the other women to leave, then walked over in as unthreatening a way as he could manage. “Are you the artist?” Yusuf asked. 

The woman shook her head with a laugh. “I’m the artistic director of B’Chira. Are you a tourist?” 

“Not exactly,” Yusuf said, then wished he hadn’t given such a strange answer. “Why do you ask?”

“I can’t place your accent. Forgive me; it’s a curiosity of mine.” 

Yusuf silently reminded himself to update his Arabic. “I haven’t been home for a long time.” 

“Oh,” the woman said, surprised. “You’re from Tunis? Welcome home, then. How long have you been away?” 

“Many years.” 

“You must have left when you were young. Tunis is quite different now since the Revolution, as is the art scene. Ah, I’ve been rude. I’m Nadia Ammar.” 

Yusuf began to give her the fake name he’d assumed over the past couple of years, hesitated, and said, “Yusuf al-Kaysani.” 

Nadia gave him a long, startled look, then she frowned. “Did Ismail put you up to this?” 

“Who?” Yusuf said, so surprised by Nadia’s sharp tone that she ducked her head in embarrassment with a laugh. 

“I’m sorry. My brother loves pranks, and I thought you might be one of them.” 

“How so?” 

“It’s a strange family legend, of a sort. Centuries-old. It’s the reason why I became interested in museums and art curation. Some heirlooms passed down through my father’s side. If they’re to be believed, there’s a djinn in my family line. Called, variably, Yusuf al-Kaysani,” Nadia said, with another wry laugh. 

“You don’t believe in djinns?” Yusuf asked, amused.

“Not particularly. Nor in family legends. I did get the heirlooms dated by a friend in the Bardo, though. Genuine 11th century antiques. I think he was tempted not to give them back.”

“Tell me more about this djinn who shares my name,” Yusuf suggested, with a quick smile. 

“There’s not much to tell. The heirlooms claim that this djinn might visit my family now and then. Perhaps in a time of need, though who knows how a djinn might measure human need. There’s even a passphrase that he’s meant to say when he appears, and one that I’m meant to say to him in turn. My brother was thinking about writing a story about it.” 

“How curious,” Yusuf said. He spoke to Nadia a little more, then excused himself as a pair of students came up to speak to her. 

Nicolò was taking a careful picture of a convoluted sculpture in a corner with his phone. He looked up as Yusuf approached, and they walked out of the centre without a further word. Once outside, Nicolò said, “All right?” 

“Yes,” Yusuf said, for between them there was never any real need for words. They leant into each other, shoulder to shoulder, then drew apart, sharing a smile. Heart full, brimming over with memories old and new, Yusuf asked, “Dar El Jeld for lunch?” 

“Why not?” They walked to their car, side by side, knuckles brushing.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: @manic_intent  
> donation prompt policy, my writing process, my art, original work/book: manicintent.carrd.co  
> —  
> Refs:  
> https://hazlitt.net/feature/meaning-allahu-akbar  
> https://heraldry.sca.org/names/arabic-naming2.htm  
> https://screenrant.com/old-guard-movie-immortals-team-ages-how-old/  
> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/15/riz-ahmed-typecast-as-a-terrorist  
> https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-erasure-of-islam-from-the-poetry-of-rumi  
> https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/maghreb  
> Can you tell from this story what is one of my favourite desserts in the world? If you haven’t tried it, check it out. There are a few versions out there depending on who’s making it. https://www.vice.com/en/article/53jjwn/a-trip-to-the-west-banks-cheesy-dessert-capital
> 
> and finally, iwillvote.com / votesaveamerica.com


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